Buttons
by Isobel Morgan
Summary: President Servalan plots.


This grew out of re-watching 'Children Of Auron', and remembering the part of 'Powerplay' where Servalan and Cally are on the 'rescue' ship together.

I'm not entirely happy with this, but it's been sat on my hard drive for ages, so I thought I'd publish it and see what people think.

**Buttons**

The President of the Terran Federation was thinking.

True, this was something she did a lot - had to, to have gotten where she was and to maintain her position. Not to mention the fact that rebuilding the Federation was taking a lot more time, effort and resources than anyone had anticipated

But at that very moment, her concentration was elsewhere. Her delegated officials had virtually everything in hand, for now and least, and that left Servalan free to consider the other little problem that vexed her.

The Liberator.

Pacing her immaculate office, ruinously expensive silks swishing around her, heels clicking on the polished floor, Servalan turned things over in her mind.

She knew that several of her advisors thought her fixation with the Liberator and its crew was a dangerous obsession, which was why she was now short several advisors and had to do her thinking herself.

None of the plans and strategies presented to her so far seemed feasible, even those drawn up by her puppeteers, and that was frustrating. To begin with, she'd almost enjoyed the challenge the crewmembers had raised; Avon particularly, but since gaining her Presidency, this pleasure had soured somewhat. And after Sarran, the thought of Avon evoked an anger borne of humiliation at how he'd rejected her, creating a new obsession; to understand. The number of reports presented to her were proof of this; in-depth background searches, where possible, and psych evaluations of each crew member, based on all available data. What buttons could be pressed to manipulate them, strings to be pulled, pressure points to lean on.

And all of them were useless.

The fiasco that had followed Carnell's stratagem had left her dismissive of psycho-strategists, but still she commissioned reports in the hope that some tiny, overlooked shred would come to light, something she could use.

Ceasing her pacing, Servalan dropped down into her chair, scrolling through a series of reports almost without looking at them. So much information generated, and most of it a waste of time. Reports of people Avon had associated with, for example. What was that going to achieve? His family were dead, which several overpaid consultants had used as a base for his lack of attachment to others.

Genius. A four-year-old bond slave could have come up with that. The girl who'd been his partner-in-crime in the bank fraud – there were some peculiarities in the accounts relating to her, but until that was cleared up, Servalan could not see any use in perusing intelligence on her. She was dead, and therefore irrelevant.

Family had always been considered when looking for pressure points, but had yet to come to anything. Vila Restal had no living family either, nor any friends that could be found. The elder Tarrant brother had been traced on several occasions, working as a mercenary on border planets, but no use had been found for him so far.

A former associate of the Mellanbys generated slight interest, but Servalan didn't believe that the girl held enough sway over the others to influence them, so that avenue was best left alone, for the time being at least. Always useful to have some back-up ideas, no matter how ineffectual they seemed at the time.

Which left Cally. The woman was a problem in herself, contradictory in many ways, yet utterly dedicated to opposing the Federation with a single-mindedness that seemed to override anything else. And it didn't help that her planet was so insistent upon its neutrality that hardly anything recent was known about them.

There had been an ambassador sent from Auron to Earth, years ago. The representatives he'd encountered first had clearly thought much along the same lines as Servalan herself, as the man had quickly been taken into the custody of the Interrogation department and broken down, with an apologetic message sent to Auron, regretting his 'accidental' death. Although the nature of their telepathy had not been understood through his dissection, the cross-examination that preceded it had been most informative; Aurons together were strong. Isolated, they were vulnerable.

That, at its most basic, explained Cally's unswerving loyalty to the rest of the crew; her sanity depended on those around her. Her own interrogation was interesting viewing too; Servalan took a certain vicious pleasure in watching a group of specialists torture her rival, even if they hadn't succeeded in breaking the woman.

Rival? Her choice of words surprised herself, even unspoken, but yes, that was how she saw Cally. Every psych report she had suggested that Avon and Cally were likely to be sleeping together. There was a certain logic to it; the Mellanby girl, with her puppy-like devotion would certainly have no allure to a man like Avon. Possibly he'd taken advantage of her attachment to him, but that would not have been enough to lead to him rejecting Servalan when she'd made him on offer she was sure he couldn't refuse. He'd said it himself:

"_It's a great pity that you and I have always been on opposite sides, Servalan."_

The one person in the Universe she'd considered sharing her power with, the only man to even remotely penetrate the emotional shields she'd built up after Don Keller, and he'd rejected her. It still filled her with fury to remember that.

_He_ had rejected _her_.

Irritation rising, Servalan rose from her chair and resumed her pacing, fist clenching at her side. She knew Avon as well as anyone could; there had to be a real reason why he'd chosen to live the life of a fugitive over one of ultimate power. And it fitted Servalan's interpretation to place the blame for this on Cally, whether this was true or not. With Blake and the Stannis woman gone, the only other person to go back to was Vila, which was preposterous. Of course, it could still relate to Blake – locating him was another plan waiting to develop, and there were some interesting ideas on her desk relating to how this information, when she had it, could lead to gaining possession of the Liberator.

But until them, one way to exorcise the lingering anger and humiliation was to direct it at Avon and at Cally, especially when she and Cally had ended up on the same rescue ship, immediately after Sarran. She couldn't help sparring with the woman, enjoying the sense of power she had – she was President now; this irritation would soon be removed. The others were incidental, and once she had the Liberator, they would be disposed of accordingly.

Seated once more, Servalan returned her attention back to the so-called intelligence before her. There must be some way to manipulate that Auron bitch. The reports were nonsense – contradictions or no, she had actually volunteered for this ridiculous anti-Federation cause, believed in it, would die for it. That was made abundantly clear in her interrogation; Cally had not believed that the others would return for her, had accepted that she would die and didn't seem to be afraid, stating repeatedly that her death may not achieve anything directly, but that it would be part of something bigger, something worth dying for.

So… she was willing to sacrifice her life for her 'cause', therefore she would risk her life to save others. Fake an emergency that she would convince the others to intervene in? No, it needed to be personal, or she'd never fall for it, and Avon certainly wouldn't.

Threads of thought interweaving in her mind, Servalan called up the information on Auron. Isolationist. Neutral. Independent. They may have exiled Cally, but it was still her home; she must have some loyalty to it.

Idly, scarlet fingernails tapping on the desk, she scrolled through reams of background information until something caught her eye. Spontaneous cell differentiation; a form of cloning that Auron had perfected. Servalan remembered one of her superior officers, years ago, trying to embarrass her by implying that she should use cloning to reproduce.

"Not exactly the maternal type, are you?" he'd joked, laughing heartily at the idea of Servalan pregnant, or nursing an infant.

Servalan had kept her response to a cold smile, and then made sure that this particular office met with an unfortunate fatal accident shortly afterwards. In a way that couldn't be traced back to herself, of course. She had her career to think of.

Cally was the right age to have been conceived this way, so that meant that she must have clone sisters… Auron had never replied to Federation demands for information on Cally, so they knew nothing about her family, her background, but this must be correct.

So there it was. The pressure point. The way for Servalan to take back her power while destroying that bitch once and for all. Not just a person Cally cared about to threaten or take hostage, but a link, the one way to assuredly bring Cally, and therefore the Liberator, running to wherever Servalan wanted them to be.

All she had to do was create a threat to Auron and the clone would contact Cally telepathically, saving any need for direct involvement until it was time for Servalan to play her hand and to take what should have been hers from the beginning. Honestly, it was ludicrous that a group of half-mad renegades should have lucked onto the most advanced ship in the Universe.

The plan itself would be simple enough to create; all they needed was something large enough that Auron would need to call out for help, but something that wouldn't damage the planet's reproductive facilities. No sense in destroying something that might prove useful. Servalan smiled, a shark scenting blood.

The idea that she could indeed employ cloning methods to ensure that her bloodline continued amused her; children, heritage without the need for disruption in her life, no distractions. And if, as a side effect, Auron was effectively neutralised, well, all the better. They irritated Servalan, with their insistence on keeping themselves separate from the rest of the universe, as if they might catch something if they got involved.

Servalan's smile grew wider, sharper as the implications of her thoughts caught up.

Perfect. There was that eager young man in her crew too, the one who had entertained her recently with details of the latest accomplishments made in pathogen research.

He could prove to be very useful to her, and he was attractive too, which had other connotations. No-one ever refused the President of the Terran Federation, especially ambitious young men who would be delighted at the opportunity to prove themselves, and to please their President into the bargain.

She flicked a switch on the controls on her desk.

"Bring me Ginka."

Servalan sat back in her chair, relaxing now, all anger and frustration vanishing into a sense of anticipatory triumph. This would solve all her problems in one swoop – remove the irritation of Auron, while claiming their most valued asset at the same time, and most importantly, it would bring her the Liberator - and Orac too, she had plenty of work for that little box of tricks - putting her crew into Servalan's hands so she could do whatever she liked to them. Call it revenge, call it getting rid of an annoyance, it made no difference to Servalan. Their execution would sound a death knell to the revolution, although maybe Avon she would keep alive. The others she would be glad to see dead, but he was too remarkable, too useful to kill. Somewhere was his pressure point, the button that would bring him under her control so she could claim him for her own too.

As President, with the Liberator in her fleet, its crew of nuisances destroyed, and Kerr Avon under her subjugation… well, she would be unstoppable.

The door slid open.

"Madam President?"

The smile returned to Servalan's face.

"Ah, yes. Ginka. Come in. I have a project for you."


End file.
